Programming advice needed

Programming advice needed

Author

Message

Paul A. Hoadl#1 / 5

Programming advice needed

Every year, I write a "program" for a secondary schools' debating competition by hand. It amounts to a list of who debates who, where and when. It is not a trivial task, and takes hours of "fiddling", for various reasons.

Last season, I wrote a series of REXX (AREXX) scripts to automate PART of the process -- ultimately the "who debates who" part of the program is just list manipulation. This saved a substantial amount of time, and avoided a significant number of errors.

On selling my Commodore Amiga, I lost the ability to run these scripts, but would *very much* like to find an alternative solution.

1) Does anyone know of any software (commercial or otherwise) which deals with this type of process?

2) What options are there for running REXX scripts under either MS-DOS or (preferably) FreeBSD?

3) Given that (at least for the first part) the actual algorithm isn't terribly complex, what are some simple options for implementing them in a different language, preferably for free, and preferably running under FreeBSD (but also given that my ability to program in C is almost non-existant)?

I am very interested to gather opinions on this before embarking on a fairly daunting (for me :-) C programming exercise, which seems to be my only option at the moment.

-- --

Mon, 09 Dec 1996 16:56:36 GMT

Jordan Hubba#2 / 5

Programming advice needed

1) Does anyone know of any software (commercial or otherwise) which deals with this type of process?

Well, there's both TCL and PERL for doing this kind of stuff, but it's hard to know which is best for you since we don't know much about your problem. If it's a fairly general task, I'm pretty sure you could get it done in either. TCLX (eXtended TCL) would be my personal choice.

2) What options are there for running REXX scripts under either MS-DOS or (preferably) FreeBSD?

You might look on cs.huji.ac.il:~ftp/pub/languages/rexx/alrexx

There's also some sort of REXX on many of the Linux sites - I'm sure it'd be an easy port.

Good luck..

Jordan -- Jordan K. Hubbard FreeBSD core team Friend to mollusks

Thu, 12 Dec 1996 21:58:17 GMT

Jonathan Scott Du#3 / 5

Programming advice needed

[stuff deleted] : : 1) Does anyone know of any software (commercial or otherwise) which deals : with this type of process? : : 2) What options are there for running REXX scripts under either MS-DOS or : (preferably) FreeBSD? : : 3) Given that (at least for the first part) the actual algorithm isn't : terribly complex, what are some simple options for implementing them in a : different language, preferably for free, and preferably running under : FreeBSD (but also given that my ability to program in C is almost : non-existant)? : : I am very interested to gather opinions on this before embarking on a : fairly daunting (for me :-) C programming exercise, which seems to be my : only option at the moment.

Well I saw a post recommending tcl and just had to put in my $0.02 :-)

Personally, I would recommend Perl since it's a great language and works on virtually any system you can get a C compiler on. (I believe there is already a port to FreeBSD, but I wouldn't know).

Perl has the syntax of C (sorta) but has useful things like regular expression matching built in.

regards,

-Scott

Thu, 12 Dec 1996 21:35:19 GMT

Paul Presc#4 / 5

Programming advice needed

There is a are at least two REXX interpreters for DOS. One is free. There is more information in the Frequently Asked Questions list, available for FTP at rtfm.mit.edu.

Paul Prescod

Fri, 13 Dec 1996 14:06:29 GMT

Thomas David Rive#5 / 5

Programming advice needed

Quote:

>Every year, I write a "program" for a secondary schools' debating >competition by hand. It amounts to a list of who debates who, where and >when. It is not a trivial task, and takes hours of "fiddling", for various >reasons.

>Last season, I wrote a series of REXX (AREXX) scripts to automate PART of >the process -- ultimately the "who debates who" part of the program is >just list manipulation. This saved a substantial amount of time, and >avoided a significant number of errors.

>On selling my Commodore Amiga, I lost the ability to run these scripts, >but would *very much* like to find an alternative solution.

>1) Does anyone know of any software (commercial or otherwise) which deals >with this type of process?

>2) What options are there for running REXX scripts under either MS-DOS or >(preferably) FreeBSD?

>3) Given that (at least for the first part) the actual algorithm isn't >terribly complex, what are some simple options for implementing them in a >different language, preferably for free, and preferably running under >FreeBSD (but also given that my ability to program in C is almost >non-existant)?

There is also a public-domain REXX implementation which could be ported to FreeBSD.. then you might be able to run your REXX scripts with few changes...

location: ftp pub/rexx/regina-0.05g.tar.Z from flipper.pvv.unit.no N.America: ftp pub/freerexx/regina/regina-0.05d.tar.Z from rexx.uwaterloo.ca description: A Rexx interpreter. The VMS version has an almost complete set of DCL lexical functions in the interpreter. Ports to MS-DOS and OS/2 exist by lack special support for these platforms. conformance: Almost completely to Rexx Language Level 4.00 with some Rexx SAA API extensions. restriction: GNU General Public License ports: Unix, VMS, MS-DOS (partial), OS/2 (partial) discussion: comp.lang.rexx updated: 1993/10/15